In prior art devices there is among the more significant work in this field that of Fouchon-Villiphi (1922), who patented specific designs of projectiles to be used in a dc gun, Northrup (1913), who outlined a tentative design for an electromagnetic spacecraft launcher, Haensler (1942) in Germany who did extensive expermentation on a dc gun to supplant the conventional 88 mm antiaircraft gun, Muck (1942) proposed a probably technically unsound mammoth rocked launcher, the RAE at Farnborough as well as the Japanese built partially successful launcher. In the U.S. there has been extensive work done which is summerized in the publications "Proceedings of the second and third Hypervelocity and Impact Effects Symposium" sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Air Research and Development Command. The summerized study shows that primarily only three basic types, the induction, repulsion and the so-called dc or parallel rail gun were functionable. All three types function on the same basic principle that into the coils or rails, a polyphased ac or dc pulsed current of varying frequency from a few cycles to several hundred kilocycles/sec is fed. This moving magnetic flux field sweeps over the projectile inducing currents within it and thereby dragging it along at a certain rate of acceleration.
1960-62 Work in the U.S. on the said electromagnetic accelerators was abandoned mainly due to such negative features as: arcing, eddy currents, high inductions in coils and projectiles causing deformation and melting. The present invention relates to an electromagnetic projectile accelerator without those negative features thus rendering possible the technical realisation of a very useful scientific research instrument for hypervelocity and simulated meteor impact studies as well as on a grander scale for technological space application.